home canning

Are your counters like mine—overflowing with the last of the tomatoes, squash from your in-laws and those plum and apple “seconds” that were too good a deal to pass up at the farmer’s market? As you survey your bounty one question keeps going through your mind, “How the heck are we going to eat all this before it spoils?” Never fear! Canning books are here. We’re not the first humans to want to preserve the sun-drenched lusciousness of summer for the colder months. Fortunately, preserving has been honed to a science and raised to a fine art. In my family we used to do old-fashioned kettle canning every August. It was a hot, sweaty affair but the sheer pleasure of…